The previous poster made a claim about poor students in high-quality schools. I thought it was an interesting claim given that there have been experiments to that effect. Someone who says "If X, I bet Y!" should be happy to hear that "Someone tried X -- do you know if they got Y?"
You are “giving up” at the point when you “give up” on doing better than a minimum wage job with no high school degree.
You're not "giving up" on the workforce when you stay in school? Also, are you "giving up" on school if you don't pursue a BA? An MA? A JD? A PhD? A postdoctoral position? A professorship? Tenure? A Nobel? Fields Medal? When you say that they "give up" you imply that they don't do something because it's too hard -- I'd rather say that they do the right thing, which happens to be the easy thing. I've "given up" on being a novelist, or an athlete, or a mathematician, or a drug lord, because I don't have the skills for that job.
I like how well your link controls for the possibility that smart people pursue higher education. I eagerly await the Center for Public Education's (they're neutral, too!) report on how height income, because most people under five feet tall don't even bother to join the labor force.
I believe that a high school education is valuable in itself, beyond financials.
Okay. There are lots of things that I think are valuable, but that I don't insist you pay for. If you're spending huge amounts of other people's money, you probably owe them some assurance that it's not just because it sure would be nice to have what you're buying (regardless of cost?) but that they will get their money's worth.
If we’re going to have a democracy, it would be nice to have voters have some idea of what’s what.
And they're learn this from government schools? How many teachers will tell kids that their government is horribly inefficient, or that their country has veered far from the values that its founders fought and killed for? Your argument might be persuasive in general, but I'm opposed to democracy so it doesn't sway me in particular.
If you have data, please share it. The only bits of info I found were that busing students from one neighborhood to the next didn't have much effect either way.
The problem of selection bias is of course going to be very present as always. One of the toughest issues with public policy is that there's rarely data up to a scientific standard of proof. It's possible that the amount of money spent on an education has nil effect. One simple counterargument is this: you can't learn about computers if you don't have them.
1)"Giving up"
You're using a slippery slope argument. I think a minimum wage job with essentially no opportunity for advancement at 14, is too early to "give up." That's the example that I responded to.
This is a place where we have to set a number -- it's currently at 16. This is a fairly subjective call, as there are a thousand different concerns that could reasonably move it one way or the other.
2)Value of an education
A decently educated populace has great value, to me. I'm willing to pay for it. On the contrary, a bad education is not worth all that much. I believe the solution to bad education is to make it better, not to get rid of it forever.
3)Democracy
How about basics like what the supreme court is and how to locate Iraq on a map? If you want to tell people about the founders, it helps if they know who the founders were and what the constitution is. No one is going to vote for your viewpoint if they don't even know what it is you're talking about.
We seem to disagree about some basic matters, so trying to argue about a high-level issue like education funding and the drop-out age is probably fairly futile.
You are “giving up” at the point when you “give up” on doing better than a minimum wage job with no high school degree.
You're not "giving up" on the workforce when you stay in school? Also, are you "giving up" on school if you don't pursue a BA? An MA? A JD? A PhD? A postdoctoral position? A professorship? Tenure? A Nobel? Fields Medal? When you say that they "give up" you imply that they don't do something because it's too hard -- I'd rather say that they do the right thing, which happens to be the easy thing. I've "given up" on being a novelist, or an athlete, or a mathematician, or a drug lord, because I don't have the skills for that job.
I like how well your link controls for the possibility that smart people pursue higher education. I eagerly await the Center for Public Education's (they're neutral, too!) report on how height income, because most people under five feet tall don't even bother to join the labor force.
I believe that a high school education is valuable in itself, beyond financials.
Okay. There are lots of things that I think are valuable, but that I don't insist you pay for. If you're spending huge amounts of other people's money, you probably owe them some assurance that it's not just because it sure would be nice to have what you're buying (regardless of cost?) but that they will get their money's worth.
If we’re going to have a democracy, it would be nice to have voters have some idea of what’s what.
And they're learn this from government schools? How many teachers will tell kids that their government is horribly inefficient, or that their country has veered far from the values that its founders fought and killed for? Your argument might be persuasive in general, but I'm opposed to democracy so it doesn't sway me in particular.